Developing brands that connect emotionally

Your brand is the heart of your organisation; the distilled essence of everything you want to communicate about who you are and what you stand for. We’ve developed a five stage process that can be applied to design a totally new brand or refresh an existing one. This comprehensive, step by step process has been carefully developed to ensure an end result which is both relevant and meaningful to the people that matter to your organisation.

Stages Of Work For Branding

Fact finding

To develop a brand which will resonate with your audiences, we need to know your organisation inside and out. Firstly, we would talk to you and your team about the direction you would like to take your brand, next we would garner views from internal and external stakeholders – perhaps through facilitated focus groups – and thirdly we would research your competitors and familiarise ourselves with their visual identities. Finally, we would look at any current and projected trends in your sector which might influence our approach.

Design concepts

Furnished with all these facts and opinions, we would use our creativity, experience and design skills to distil this information into an appropriate visual representation of your organisation. At this stage we usually work up several different design concepts which we prefer to present back to you in person. These concepts will recommend fonts and colour palettes as well as showcasing the new or refreshed logo on its own and on sample documents. Our clients tell us this is their favourite bit, and if we’ve got it right, you’ll love at least one of them.

Design development

Once you have settled on one concept, we would use your feedback to develop this visual direction in more detail. This comprehensive representation of your proposed new identity would include how the new brand would work across a wide range of materials in print as well as digital. At this stage some of our clients choose to consult with stakeholders and we would be ready to make minor amendments following this if necessary.

Preparing design assets

With the brand identity agreed, the next stage is to provide you with your new logo and design guidelines describing how your new brand should be applied to transform the look and feel of your entire organisation. To maintain the integrity of your new brand, it’s crucial that these guidelines are understood and shared across your organisation. They will include rules for using fonts and colours as well as the logo and can also include guidance about photography and illustrations. In the past we have run branding workshops to help our clients communicate internally how the new identity should be applied within an organisation.

Design applications

We know that for many of our clients getting the design right is only the start; ensuring that the brand is applied correctly on everything from business cards to Twitter is where the real hard work begins. To ease your workload, we can create all the files you need to ensure a smooth branding roll-out. From stationery, leaflet and poster templates to advertising, exhibition panels, signage and digital formats, we can do as much or as little as you like.